‘The Simpsons’ Won’t Be Streaming Correctly on Disney Plus Until May

One of the cornerstones of Disney+’s initial pitch to potential customers was every single episode of every season of The Simpsons, which Disney acquired as part of its merger with 20th Century Fox. When Disney+ launched last fall, however, the show became one of the service’s early sources of controversy. Disney chose to present the entire series in the widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio — even though for almost 20 seasons The Simpsons was shot and screened in the boxier 4:3 aspect ratio.

Disney was swamped with complaints about the issue, and they quickly announced that they would correct the 19+ affected seasons “in early 2020.” Well, it ain’t early 2020 anymore. And if you check The Simpsons on your Disney+ account, you’ll see they’re still streaming the show in 16:9. According to announcement on the company’s official Twitter account, we should now expect the corrected editions “by the end of May.” Early 2020, the middle of 2020, whatever.

Obviously, right now this is very low on the scale of urgent problems confronting Disney or our world. Still, it’s kind of curious that it has taken this long to correct the issue, particularly as Disney+ has not exactly been pumping out dozens of new shows and films every week since their launch. Apart from a few reality shows and the final season of The Clone Wars, Disney+ hasn’t had much of anything new in months. At least this will be fixed by the end of May. (Hopefully.)